Graduate Student Work and Accomplishments

PhD Dissertation Abstracts

Barclay Spriggs

Globally and historically, madness appears as a prominent socio-medical concern that
also occupies a significant space in literary tradition. There has been an increase
in the number of scholars who study madness and literature in postcolonial works.
However, the predominant view and treatment of madness – both socially and medically
– adheres to the European, white male construct that has informed a more or less universal
regard of those who suffer from mental woes: they are deranged, sick, ill. This poses
a problem for postcolonial works when we consider the sexist and racist implications
in psychology that were enhanced through the colonial project, justified through self-referential
science, and continue today. This study interrogates the troubling assumptions of
the ‘mad other’ by arguing that rather than ‘madness,’ authors and their characters
create alternative realities as psychic shields. These formations are both a result
of and protection from oppressive or disturbing experiences and/or environments. This
dissertation investigates forms of trauma that compel characters to create different
worlds. Although male characters endure forms of violence, women most especially endure
emotional deprivation and/or sexual violence that has an impact on the narrative voice
and identity, reflecting greater problems in reality. The authors of ‘mad’ characters
and the characters themselves offer insight to other worlds that should not be dismissed
as mere fiction: atrocity is real and the mechanisms we develop in the face of horror
is an effort to preserve the inner self from complete fracture. The characters in
this study are not ‘crazy.’ Rather, they seek divergent worlds to mentally survive
horrific experiences. This research validates alternative realities as logical responses
to trauma and oppression. To do so, this study combines postcolonial theories, feminist
studies, psychology and psychoanalysis, and global statistics to contribute a different
approach to ‘madness’ and to elucidate the need for alternative realities that ultimately
impacts us all.

Gina Breen: Resurrecting French-Algerian representations

The Algerian experiences of Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, and Assia Djebar appear significantly
different due to their distinct ethnic, political, and religious backgrounds, including
their perceived status as European, immigrant, and native. Their contrasting literary
styles and techniques, as well as their dates of publication, further emphasize this.

For the first time this project will explore collectively their narrative depictions
of French Algeria, specifically focusing on how they address the Algerian War (1954-1962),
in addition to the events that preceded and succeeded one of the bloodiest battles
of decolonization. By analyzing a selection of their works (consisting of fiction,
non-fiction, and political theory), which span some fifty years (1942-1996), we will
conceive a new tripartite memory that also acknowledges the ambivalence involved in
remembering.

Indeed, this chronological re-evaluation of their oeuvres and identities will demonstrate
the plurality of Algerian colonial and postcolonial society. However, in spite of
their diversity, and as a direct result of their shared experiences of French colonialism
in Algeria, there are more elements that unite these authors, rather than divide them.

Al Camp: L’essentiel ou lagniappe: The Ideology of French Revitalization in Louisiana

Louisiana’s French revitalization movement has received millions of dollars in taxpayer
funding through its various initiatives such as music and cultural festivals, public
school French immersion programs, and academic exchange programs, among others. Over
forty years ago, the state of Louisiana created CODOFIL, a government agency dedicated
to the promotion of Francophone language and culture in Louisiana, yet the number
of Francophones in the state has continued to decline at an alarming rate according
to the most reliable data available. My study investigates the ideology and demographics
of those involved in French education programs in Louisiana’s public schools. Who
decides to become a French teacher and why? What do the administrators in charge of
these programs really hope to accomplish and why? Through analyzing the unique corpus
of interviews that I have created by speaking with these individuals from around the
state, I hope to answer these questions and more.

Natacha Jeudy

My project consists of looking at the Ursuline community, but more particularly at
the obituary documents that these devout woman produced between the 17th and 19th
century in France, Louisiana, and Quebec. The corpus is composed of more than 250
documents, all depicting the death of a holy woman, and is drawn from three different
registers: religious annals, religious collections and letters. The originality of
these documents allows me to engage in many obscure and unanswered questions concerning
the writing of religious cloistered women in regards to their knowledge of the written
French language and their (non-)reproduction of it, while further understanding the
origin of their literacy practice. By using a comparative approach, I analyze the
spelling, typography, and evolution found in these diverse documents – such as the
use of the letter “v, “u”, “i”, and “j” – from these three geographically-distance
communities.

Tara Smithson: Maid in (and out of) France: Postcolonial Constructions of Identity
Through the Figure of Joan of Arc, 1953-2012

Since her resurgence in the nineteenth century, Joan of Arc has become one of the
most emblematic figures of French history. Commemorated in public statuary, celebrated
by writers, and championed by politicians, la Pucelle’s story is tantamount to national
myth. In light of Joan of Arc’s centrality to France’s iconic imagining of itself
during the spread of its empire, this project examines Joan of Arc’s postcolonial
afterlife. Drawing on traditional literary texts as well as political speeches, social
media posts, trial testimony, and grassroots public performance from the 20th and
21st centuries, I ask when and to what ends francophone populations conjure the figure
of Joan of Arc, a potent symbol of French nationalism, in their own, self-told narratives
of heritage. Contrary to recent critical readings that foreground Joan of Arc’s overdetermination
by the French Far Right, I contend that Joan of Arc becomes a fruitful medium through
which francophone populations narrate their own national identities, reflect on postcolonial
relationships, and articulate responses to transnational traumas. This study also
analyzes the rhetorical use of “Joan of Arc” as a transnational shorthand for politically-engaged
women, even when such women are battling the French. Against the grain of officializing
narratives that depict Joan of Arc as (Church appropriated) saint or (State-appropriated)
war hero, this study considers her experience as a political prisoner who faced extended
interrogation, detainment, and threats of torture. Aligning Joan’s story with the
experiences of other women warriors and detainees allows for new ways of theorizing
how nations negotiate relationships with each other through women’s bodies.

Ben Sparks: The Plagues of Colonialism: Representations of Suffering in the Colonial
and Postcolonial Algerian Francophone Novel from 1950-1966

The indigenous francophone Algerian novel dates from the early 1950s and since then
has been a political manifestation of uneasiness. The anticolonial undertones of this
literature demonstrate the sufferings and harsh realities of life under an oppressive
colonial regime. This dissertation analyzes the power and effects of suffering in
the colonial and postcolonial francophone Algerian novel whether explicitly or allegorically
through violence and poverty, the plagues of colonialism. In doing so, it looks at
the role of suffering in this literature and its effects on narration and character
development. The themes of violence and poverty run rampant in the colonial novel
insomuch that the character’s actions become directly tied to their suffering; whether
leading to despair or hope, death or revolution. This dissertation aims to contribute
to the rerouting of trauma studies from a Euro-American centric discipline to a discourse
of trauma resulting from a repressive colonial system through the works of Mohammed
Dib, Mouloud Mammeri, Mouloud Feraoun and Kateb Yacine.

M.A. Thesis Abstracts

Gordon Walker: Jean Cocteau: Orpheus Narcissus

Over the course of thirty years, the poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau created a singular
artistic project he called the Orphic trilogy: Le Sang d’un poète (1930), Orphée (1950),
and Le Testament d’Orphée (1959). This trilogy is marked by an Orphic pattern of a
poet’s journey into an underworld to confront death. I will show that Cocteau’s invention
is to have Orpheus be in love with death, for death to be an attractive and irresistible
force to the poet. Simultaneously, Cocteau avails himself of the Narcissus myth, the
man in love with his own reflection. Orpheus and Narcissus converge in these films
as a synthesis of Cocteau’s personal obsessions, which I will identify in his own
life. I will reveal that Cocteau’s usage of Narcissus results in a queer aesthetic
which courses through the trilogy. Through a close textual and visual analysis of
these films, I hope to enrich the appreciation and criticism of this major artistic
achievement.

Quebec’s status as a potentially colonial space that underwent a process akin to decolonization
during the Révolution tranquille has generated much critical attention in recent years,
as scholars consider how Quebec’s liberatory struggles resonate with other narratives
of decolonization around the globe. Roch Carrier’s first and most renowned novel,
La guerre, yes sir!, (1968) deserves particular attention as a literary work that
interrogates Quebec’s colonial dynamics. While scholars have emphasized the images
of the body in Carrier’s work, with particular consideration of La guerre, yes sir!’s
carnivalesque elements, no study thus far has focused on how shifting depictions of
individual bodies over time and space allegorize transformations of an imagined national
body. I argue that La guerre, yes sir! dramatizes Quebec’s struggle to regain possession
of and define its national body, as represented by the villagers’ desire to recover
physical and symbolic possession of the corpse of the fallen soldier, Corriveau. Specifically,
I examine Carrier’s engagement with familiar tropes of contemporaneous anticolonial
writing, such as the wounded, cannibalized body, zombified, or temporally-disruptive
body, demonstrating the community’s power to ultimately resignify sites of injury
as sources for healing.